Games sales exceed movie box-office receipts. But are the two comparable?

THERE is nothing the video-game industry likes more than boasting about how it is bigger than the film business. For this week's launch of “Halo 2”, a shoot-'em-up that runs on Microsoft's Xbox console, over 6,000 shops across America opened their doors at midnight to sell the game to queues of fans. Add over 1.5m pre-orders and the game brought in over $100m in its first day on sale. Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, called it “an opening day that's greater than any motion picture has ever had in history.” For example, “The Incredibles”, the latest blockbuster film from Pixar, took a mere $70.5m in its opening weekend, while the record for an opening day's ticket sales, at $40.4m, is held by “Spider-Man 2”. Overall, annual game sales, at around $20 billion, now exceed box-office receipts.

But the two are not really comparable. Film-going is mainstream: nearly everybody does it at some time. Around 10m people saw “The Incredibles” last weekend, and perhaps 50m people will see it in cinemas eventually. Even more will view it on television, DVD, or on a plane. Playing video games is still a minority sport, though its popularity has soared. Not everybody wants a games console. It is only because games cost so much more than film tickets ($50 versus $7) that games can outsell films, despite their narrower appeal.

Games and films would be more comparable if more people played games, there was no need to buy a console, and individual games cost as little as film tickets. All of that describes mobile-phone gaming. Having moved from the bedroom to the living room, gaming is now moving on to the mobile handset, says Brian Greasley of Digital Bridges, a mobile-games firm.

According to the latest Mobinet study of 4,500 mobile users in 13 countries by A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, and the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge University, the number of people who download games to their phones grew in the past year to 10% of the world's 1.7 billion mobile users, exceeding the number of console users.

The fragmented mobile-games industry is consolidating fast, and there are more higher quality games based on big franchises such as Spider-Man. Jamdat, a mobile-games firm, went public in October. Most tellingly of all, the big boys are moving in. “There is the potential for a massive market in the future,” says Bruce McMillan of Electronic Arts, the world's biggest games publisher, “so it makes sense for us to have a stronger presence.” Yet Screen Digest, a consultancy, reckons that the value of the mobile-gaming market will only exceed $1 billion for the first time this year. Small change next to the film business—but, perhaps, the more valid comparison.